


"Hero"

by reallysmallgiantrobot



Category: Kamen Rider Kuuga, Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor | Mobile Police Patlabor, Patlabor (TV)
Genre: Gen, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-06 03:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4205514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reallysmallgiantrobot/pseuds/reallysmallgiantrobot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Tokyo Metropolitan Police's Second Special Vehicles Division gets a new mechanic who is more than he seems, Noa Izumi makes a new friend, and Godai Yuusuke searches for answers which never seem forthcoming.</p><p>(Takes place 12 years after the end of the second Patlabor OVA, ten years after the end of Kamen Rider Kuuga, and between six months to a year after QSF's oft-alluded but rarely-described First Decade War)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Trigger

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Hikari Photo Studio](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1904601) by [QSF](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QSF/pseuds/QSF). 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During a routine monster fight, the officers of the SV2 encounter a smaller, stranger monster.

> _**Labor** : The common name for robots designed for heavy industrial use. The rise of labors sparked a revolution in construction and civil engineering, but labor-related crime skyrocketed as well. To combat this new threat, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police created a patrol labor unit, the Special Vehicles Unit Second Section (SV2)._
> 
> _This was the origin of Patlabor.*_

 

* * *

 

”Shoot it, Noa!” came the voice of Asuma Shinohara over the radio in a crackling scream.

Noa Izumi couldn’t.

She was sitting in the cockpit of Alphonse, her Ingram-model patrol labor.  Twelve years ago, her labor, Alphonse, had been one of the most advanced pilotable robots on the planet, one of the few humanoid labors able to mimic almost any movement a human could make.  More, over that twelve years, Alphonse had been recording and easing into Noa’s movement patterns to the point where she could move him almost as easily as she could her own body.  The labor was taking advantage of that now.  There were dozens of subtle movements in Alphonse’s arms when he held the giant revolver on its target, things that helped her aim a little better. 

She needed those things.  Twelve years of practice and she was still a weak shot. 

That didn’t matter much at the moment: the target was barely three meters from the muzzle but she had half an inkling that the 37mm round would only make it angry.  The target, in this case, was some kind of scaly monster, a half-blind dinosaur-beast that’d been deep down under the Babylon complex for who-knew-how long.  It was easily three meters taller than the 8-meter tall patrol labor and even through the inches of metal, fiberglass and ceramic that made up Alphonse’s exterior, she could smell its rancid breath. 

On the upside: no tentacles this time.  Tentacled creatures tended to really do some damage to Alphonse before they could get put down. 

Noa knew she should be pulling the trigger.  The dinosaur-thing was scaring people out of their offices and ever since it pushed its way up through the concrete at the center of the Babylon Complex, it had crushed three cars, at least injured ten people and torn open the back of a restaurant.  She knew she should be trying to kill it.  It was a threat.

But it was also just an animal.  A big animal.  A _really_ big animal.

But still just an animal.

There again, looking into its massive, tooth-filled maw as it hissed at her, Noa knew that she didn’t want it to get wherever it thought it was going.

Yet she still couldn’t pull the trigger.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” came Ohta’s voice before his labor unloaded its revolver into the side of the beast.  Ohta, for better or worse, had never had trouble pulling the trigger.

“Ohta, what are you doing?!” screamed both Noa and Kumagami, Ohta’s director.

He probably would have had something to say in reply but the only thing that came over the radio was his frustrated grunts as his labor was slapped away by one of the monster’s massive forelimbs, the impact sending the arm holding the revolver spinning high into the air. 

The beast hissed and a massive webbed frill of spines stood up on its back, making it look even larger.  Noa knew it was a pretty common threat display among mammals; had no clue dinosaurs did it, too.

“I told you we should’ve brought the riot gun!” barked Ohta over the radio, “Noa, if you aren’t going to shoot it, throw me your sidearm!  I won’t miss this time!”

Over the radio’d-in objections, Noa had Alphonse holster her revolver and instead braced herself for impact as she prepared to charge the thing.

But as Alphonse shifted his weight to his front foot (a movement which had become silky-smooth over the years, in spite of how many times those actuators had been damaged, repaired and replaced over the past decade), preparing to launch Alphonse and Noa forward to tackle the monster, she caught something on the edge of one of her monitors: a person running into the scene.

She jerked the controls into reverse, sending Alphonse (and herself) stumbling backward into a fairly expensive-looking piece of corporate art she’d been trying to avoid.  She was about to get on the loudspeaker to advise the person to get the heck outta here when she heard the gasps over the radio and she tilted her head to the monitors again to see what it was that had so surprised them.

“Number Four…” it was Asuma saying it but the others were thinking it, too. 

Number Four was the same basic size and shape as a human, dressed in a stylized suit of super-black armor somewhere between an ancient Greek soldier and an insect carapace.  Its helmet bore an inhuman faceplate with a mandible-like mouthpiece and a pair of massive red eyes crowned with five horns that seemed to be made of burning gold.

Her cameras couldn’t quite make out the finer details because of the heat haze around him other than the realization that the heat haze was _only_ around him.

Number Four first appeared in Tokyo a couple years after she’d joined the Second Special Vehicles Division.  They’d all kept up with him on TV because (thankfully) the Unknown Lifeforms he and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police had fought were either too small or too destructive for the higher-ups to even consider tossing labors at them.  Asuma had guessed at the time that it was because the Ingram-model patrol labors (nevermind the upgraded, less personalized, Peacemaker models) cost hundreds of millions of yen while pensions paid to the families of dead cops were much, much cheaper.  It was a cynical way to think, but it was hard to argue with it.

But then he’d disappeared, along with all the Unknown Lifeforms, after the Day of Flame.  Nobody was quite sure what had happened but one of the Lifeforms, Number Zero, and Number Four had fought downtown and, well, beyond that one thing was certain: whether or not Number Four won, Tokyo had lost.

Special Vehicles had been there in the aftermath backing up the fire department.  The hope was that the Ingrams and the Peacemakers (which the other shift had received), with their more humanoid movements, would be better-equipped to rescue any survivors from the impossible fires than were the comparatively clunky fire labors.  They never found out because they never found any survivors.

Only victims.  Charred skeletons of people who’d died contorted in agony.

Thankfully it had all been over after that.

In her gut, Noa worried that Number Four’s reappearance meant that it wasn’t, after all.  That this was some new cycle, that…

The roar of the monster shook her out of the shock of seeing the bug-eyed Lifeform again.  She eased Alphonse’s controls forward and the Ingram took a step forward, arms out and ready to attempt to catch the beast if it charged.  She set her jaw and slammed her feet down in a well-practiced series of movements, moving Alphonse’s arms slightly to compensate for the big steps (even though it wasn’t necessary: Alphonse had this maneuver down to an instinct, too) which took her over the bug-man and slamming the Ingram’s arms into the monster’s side.

“Move away!” she shouted through Alphonse’s loudspeakers as she eased the labor’s controls forward again, getting the shoulder of the machine under the curve of the beast’s chest, making it expel a hot gust of foul-smelling air. “All civilians should evacuate the area immediately!”

Number Four did step away and she could feel its red gaze on her as she and Alphonse braced and started trying to push the beast back to its fissure.

“Forget the monster, Noa!  Get Number Four!  It’s distracted!”

Her eyes flicked to one of the other monitors and she saw that Ohta’s labor rushing after Number Four.  Of course, Number Four was standing near Alphonse.

A pillar of flame appeared out of nowhere between Alphonse and Ohta’s labor, which stumbled and fell onto its side, skidding a few meters away.  Shige and the maintenance crew were going to have a busy day.

The beast had also noticed the flame and seemed even more startled than it had been at getting shoulder-checked in the stomach by Alphonse.

She pulled a few of the little triggers in Alphonse’s controls and felt the reassuring rumble of the machine’s engines sweating horsepower as she moved the crook of the Ingram’s elbow up toward the distracted dinosaur-thing’s neck and pushed, pulling the thing down onto its side with a heavy thud.

“It’s down!” she crowed into the radio over the sound of Ohta’s muffled cursing as he tried to coax his Labor back to its feet.  “Now what?”

“We’re working with the higher-ups to get authorization to use explosives: can you get it back into the hole?”

The beast was still gasping for air and the fissure it crawled out of wasn’t a long way away.  Her eyes flipped to the display detailing Alphonse’s battery levels.  “I’ll give it a try.”

“But Number Four!  We can’t let him get away!” growled Ohta.

“We have a job to do,” came Kumagami’s voice over the line.

“But—“

“He’s not our problem. Finish the job!”

Noa breathed a sigh of relief when she felt Ohta’s labor easing some of the strain from Alphonse’s engines.  The lessened strained might (might) let her avoid getting chewed out by Sakaki, the head mechanic. 

The fissure wasn’t far now but the beast was starting to catch its breath.  She took a breath of her own before saying into the radio, “We don’t have a lot of time.  I don’t know what it’s gonna do, but—“

The thing thrashed hard enough to send Alphonse stumbling back and to knock Ohta’s labor to the ground again, eliciting a round of cursing.  Noa began reaching for Alphonse’s stun baton but the creature didn’t seem interested in attacking and flipped back onto its feet, scrambling away.

“Noa!” Asuma _and_ Ohta this time.

“I know!”  One pedal, then the other sent her running after the beast as she tried her hardest not to imagine yet another conversation with their new insurance adjuster for the damage Alphonse’s running feet were going to do to the Babylon Complex’s once-immaculate commerce park.

She was about to start the moves that would send Alphonse through the air to tackle the thing when another pillar of flame appeared in front of the beast and the beast veered away.  It veered away again when another flame sprang up.

The smell of the fire.  The smoke from the Day of Flame had had its own smell and it was the same smell as the fire that shot up from the ground to direct the dino-thing away from any feasible escape route but the hole it crawled out of.

“What’s it _doing_?” hissed Asuma over the radio.

Noa left the question unanswered and turned the labor’s head slowly to try and get sight of Number Four.  When she found it, it had somehow got itself to a tenth-story balcony on one of the Complex’s higher-end corporate dorms and it was making short, controlled motions to keep just… setting nothing on fire to drive the beast back to its hole.

It was setting the air on fire without any obvious tools.

Was that how it—or Number Zero, if there really was a difference—caused all that chaos during the Day of Flame?  Just a bit of… of will?  Of magic?  Or whatever it was doing?  All those charred people, all those people crowded on the other side of the police barriers praying that their loved ones would be found miraculously alive, all those people who broke down or started hurling abuse or started fights or throwing things… all that from some man waving his arms?

There was a roar over the radio and she turned to look and saw Ohta’s labor tackling the dinosaur-thing at the neck, spent revolver held ready to pistol-whip the poor beast.

Noa steered Alphonse over to help the increasingly-frenzied animal before Ohta did something regrettable that made the poor thing fit only to be sold off to Schaft Enterprises or whichever “research” firm decided it had a need to know how a dinosaur worked.  She got Alphonse’s hands on the beast’s bulky forelimbs—weren’t T-Rexes supposed to have little vestigial ones?—and started pulling the thrashing monstrosity toward the fissure.

There was a sudden increase in the output necessary to move the thing as Ohta managed to clock the beast on the back of its head with the butt of his gun.

Ohta’s cocky grunt carried over the radio. 

Noa scowled a little as she brought Alphonse down to inspect the animal.  Still breathing, good.  A little trickle of blood on the back of its head but not as bad as she was afraid.  “What are you doing, Ohta?  You could _kill_ it!”

“It’s _down_ , isn’t it?”

“It’s just an animal!  A scared one!  You can’t do that!”

“It’s not dead, it’s just _down_.  Now let’s get it into the hole so we can go after—“

Noa made a sharp sound as she began dragging the unconscious beast toward the fissure.  Ohta followed suit.

The fissure had an incline, as if it were dug out at an angle.  She’d had her fill of wandering in tunnels more than a decade ago so she’d just have to hope for the best for the poor, lost thing.  At least if it was unconscious, it wouldn’t hurt anyone else or itself.  She was going to have to have _such_ a talk with Ohta later.  Maybe even see if she could rope Hiromi in; he loved animals even more than Noa did.

But for now, it was just helping Ohta drag the beast into the fissure and hope they could push it down far enough before the authorization to use explosives came through.  Closing the fissure would be fine, but more than that would be cruel.

“So which of us is going in?” whispered Ohta over the radio once the unconscious beast dozed in the mouth of the fissure.  He’d been down in the labyrinth with her. 

Between the flames and the spectre of going back underground, she felt her heart starting to pound in her chest.  She took a deep breath and eased Alphonse forward to start pushing the beast deeper into the fissure.

But the creature seemed to fall back a little on its own.  And a little further.

Her monitors showed a little heat shimmer behind the beast and she flipped her display to show the thermal camera.  Something small—human-sized—and incredibly hot was pulling the beast deeper into the cave.  Noa was about to ask what she should do when a pillar of flame erupted between her and the beast, sending Alphonse back a couple steps.

Then she noticed a mark on each side of the fissure, all hard angles and vaguely familiar, like a hieroglyph or something.  She didn’t know what it was but she didn’t like it and she pulled back on the controls, screaming, “Back!” into her radio.

There was a strange sensation like feeling a bubble pop inside the world followed by two small explosions as the fissure collapsed in on itself.

“What the heck just happened?” Asuma called over the radio.

“Number Four sealed itself in with the monster” muttered Noa, trying to rid herself of the twin stinks of underground air and Number Four’s flame.

“It _got away_ ,” spat Ohta.

“Well, it’s over now,” came Kumagami’s voice over the radio, “Looks like we’ve got a long night of incident reports to write up.”

Noa let out a sigh as she turned away from the caved-in fissure and steered Alphonse onto the labor-carrier’s now-upright recharging bay, closing her eyes as the bay slowly, smoothly pulled Alphonse horizontal with Noa inside, feeling as ever like the beating heart of a slumbering giant.

Away from the scent of the underground and the fire, wrapping herself in the warm machinery and the plastic-oil-leather-ozone safety of Alphonse’s cockpit.  It wasn’t the first time she’d opted to turn off the radio and ride back to the hangar inside her labor and she was so glad they’d stopped asking her about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Opening text is based on an amalgamation of translations for the opening of the Patlabor TV series by a variety of companies and entities and is reproduced here to help explain terminology and basic concepts for those not familiar with the series as well as to pay homage to the structure of the episodes.
> 
> Adding in a link to a theme song seemed like it'd have been a bit much and besides which, there are a few too many to choose from even as I'm partial to "You Are The One".


	2. Repair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Godai Yuusuke interviews for a job with the SV2 maintenance crew.

> _Long ago, the Grongi Tribe terrorized the Linto Tribe with their ability to transform into animal warriors and capacity for violence.  One of the Linto volunteered to become the warrior Kuuga, taking on the power of the Grongi, before sealing them and himself away._
> 
> _Thousands of years later, Godai Yuusuke took up the burden of Kuuga to protect the world from the Grongi; but in the wake of his victory, Godai was transformed and seeks to find a balance between his desire to be a peaceful man and Kuuga’s capacity for violence._

 

* * *

 

The old man sat down across from Godai with a speed Godai did not expect.  He looked old enough that moving at all (nevermind sitting) would he cause for the low groans that so often accompanied aging muscles.  Godai was happy to be wrong on that count.

“The name’s Sakaki,” said the man as he picked up the short pile of papers in front of him, “If you pass this interview, it’ll be that or ‘Old Man’.”  The man was dressed like the rest of the maintenance crew Godai noticed running this way and that, swarming over the gigantic white robots, transporting pieces from storerooms, and barking instructions to one another.  The main difference was that this man wore a tie under his coveralls and a pair of mirrored glasses that made it hard to read him.  This seemed appropriate; it helped cement the man’s military demeanor, which certainly explained the almost martial air of the hangar’s maintenance crew.

Under normal circumstances, that sort of air would make him turn tail.  But at the moment, he felt a particular need to have someone telling him what to do.  He’d been in the lead too much lately in the nightmare spaces between worlds, standing at the front of what should have felt like an army but felt more like a gang, all swarming on one man.

“Godai Yuusuke, sir,” replied Godai, about to offer the man one of his cards before remembering that he’d attached one to his resume.  Old habits.  Old habits were what he needed now.  That and having someone else be in charge.

“Hm,” grunted the man.  Godai couldn’t see his eyes but he got the impression that behind the man’s sunglasses, Sakaki was scanning over the resume in front of him.  “I see you’ve never worked as a mechanic,” stated the man, his head jerking up slightly and the scowl on his face deepening, “What the Hell are you doing here?”

Godai shrank back a little before gesturing to the attached card, “I… I have a lot of skills, sir—“ the number on the card now read 3437 “—I know my way around a machine, but I’ve never done it professionally.  But I th—“

“Never done much of anything professionally,” Sakaki said before Godai could finish.  “This is a list of restaurants, shops, and daycares, only two of them lasting more than a year.”  Sakaki made a short sound of frustration and stood up, “I don’t have time to train some pup from scratch.  I don’t doubt your taste, but it takes more than a love of machines to do this job.  Goodbye.”  Sakaki, true to his military bearing, turned on his heel and began walking away.

Godai could feel his heart sinking into his stomach.  He could also feel the Amadam stone just below his stomach spinning to life inside its stone container, just begging him to transform again, to become Kuuga and leap on the old fool for daring for even a moment to doubt what Kuuga was capable of.  Godai wanted to say that was Grongi logic, but that was too easy.  It was a part of him.  The Grongi were a part of him.  They had not even a different breed of human, just a different philosophy. 

“Wait, sir,” pleaded Godai, standing as well.

Sakaki stood still but did not turn. 

Godai felt a surge of… well, of some emotion.  Not one that got the Amadam spinning, so he leaned into it.  “I know I don’t have any of the experience required but if you give me a chance, I’ll show you that I can be a help.”

The old man did turn now, walking back to Godai.  When the brim of his cap was barely a centimeter away from touching Godai, he looked at Godai’s face—Godai could swear he felt the man’s eyes boring into him through the mirrored lenses of his glasses—and said, “Tell me why you want this job.”

“I want to be a help, sir.”

“That’s not a mechanic’s answer.  I don’t have time for dillitantes.  We work _hard_ here.  On-call all day, every day.  We don’t have families and if we do, we neglect them because even on a good day, when some brass wants to exaggerate how seriously they take a thing and send these machines out to look impressive, it’s still hours of maintenance.  This job is all day, every day.  It’s the French Foreign Legion of jobs, do you understand that?”

Godai laughed a little and ran a hand through his hair.  “Mr. Sakaki, the only reason I came here and _not_ the French Foreign Legion is because I’ve had my fill of fighting.”  He tried to smile.  He knew it didn’t work as he intended.

Sakaki stared at Godai before gesturing to a young woman carrying a heavy-looking metal shaft under one arm and a spool of cable in the other.  “Which one’re you working on?”

“Unit Three’s Zero-Two, sir.  Left ankle gave out during practice.”

Sakaki grabbed Godai’s shoulder and shoved Godai at the young woman, “Point him to a pair of coveralls and have him do it.”

“Who’s he, sir?”

“Godai Yuusu—“ Godai began.

“Possible fresh meat.  You’re volunteered to put him through his paces.  If he can’t do it, let me know.”

The woman nodded sharply and jogged off.

Godai blinked a couple times before Sakaki snapped his fingers, “What’re you waiting for, kid?  After her!”

“Oh!” said Godai as he realized what had just happened, “Thank you, sir.”  He gave Sakaki a quick thumbs-up before dashing after the woman.

 

* * *

 

Being in a uniform was weird.  It wasn’t something he did often, uniforms.  He’d read a book once that talked about how uniforms helped people fall into a role and often had the side-effect of allowing others to treat you as if you were your role.  Under most circumstances, he wasn’t a fan of it—it was the sort of thing that led people into some truly dangerous sorts of thinking. 

Uniforms, wars, sectarianism, bigotry, all of it.  It all started with grouping people off.

But what else were you supposed to do, right?

And besides, right now, a uniform suited him nicely.  Disappearing into a mass of people dedicated to a task was such a welcome idea right now, especially since he wasn’t actually in an army (anymore; not that they’d had uniforms then) but part of a truly massive group of people who dedicated to making sure machines piloted by the famous/infamous Tokyo SV2 keep functioning.

Goodness knew he’d worked harder for goals he liked less.

The woman, Kido, tossed the metal shaft into his hands once he was suited up and gestured up to the standing machine.  “You know what you’re doing?” she asked, eyes quickly searching Godai’s face; for what, he couldn’t say. 

He could only smile a little and shrug, “I’m good at figuring these things out.”

Her face went cold there, “I’m gonna assume you’re joking.”

Godai couldn’t stop himself from laughing.  It was a painful sensation and he had to guess there was a quality to it that she didn’t like.

“Look, there’s no shame in backing out.  More accomplished mechanics than you have turned tail after taking _one look_ at the inside of a Peacemaker.”  He knew Kido was trying to spare him.  It sounded harsh but that was smart: if she got attached from the start, she’d only be sad when people left.

Or maybe he was wrong.  But even if he was, he was going to think as well on her as he could.

“It’s okay,” he said, “Just… show me which one needs the transplant.”

She rolled her eyes with a smile and gestured to one of the sleeker-looking robots.  The whole leg assembly had already been opened up and he tried not to think of the last time he’d seen that sort of thing.  Tried not to think about anything from what he’d come to call the Decade War.  Tried not to think of the Rider in pink who sometimes copied Kuuga’s form, nor his friend in blue with the gun that fired other Riders, nor the middle-aged man who became one monster after another.  He tried not to think of the ease with which Decade moved, the way he seemed to almost accidentally push himself out of the way of any attack the Riders made before landing a single blow that sent Rider after Rider through the swirling chrome light of interdimensional portals.

But at least the smell in the hangar was strong enough to ground some part of him in the here and now.  The sweet tang of cooled metal, without the sulfur, without the dust, without the ozone stink of the interdimensional portals, just the metal and the people around him.  There were bets being taken as to whether the new kid (who needed a haircut) was going to be able to make heads or tails of the advanced joint, with its two gyroscopes, sub-computers and the complex network of subservient motors that allowed the joint to move as flexibly as it was made to. 

Looking at the naked assembly, he remembered the agility with which the old models moved, particularly the first unit, the one that didn’t fire.  He was suddenly curious to see one of the new ones at work.

The Amadam stone in his gut seemed to sense his surge of gratitude to it for the way its forcible modifications to his nerves let his eyes take in the whole of the mechanism at once.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”  Not one of the mechanics.  A much older voice.  Deep as the ocean with a faint metallic distortion underneath.  Hongo.

Godai felt himself putting the sub-motors to the side, carefully preserving their order as he tried not to remember the smaller and even more-advanced mechanisms he saw whirring in Hongo’s shoulder.  Hongo was a strange one.  Godai was almost glad he’d not met the man earlier.  Hongo was the first of the Kamen Riders and he spoke forcefully about the necessity of the Riders and their importance to the world.  He’d always been on the cusp of demanding to know why, after the defeat of the Grongi, Kuuga had not joined the other Riders in the fight against the diverse groups which were trying to take over the world.

Godai was glad they never got to that talk.

He was reaching in and carefully unplugging a few flat data cables, feeling a few more pairs of eyes on him.  He didn’t look up.  He wasn’t really seeing the elegantly-designed dataports that tucked into little pockets along the frames the ankle joint was meant to connect.  He was trying to see it, but he couldn’t.

All he saw was Hongo on the ground, trying to reach over to put his arm back on.  Godai understood that Hongo had either built himself a new body or replaced so many parts of the one he was born with that it was nearly entirely a machine now.  There wasn’t time to ask which or why.  The latter question he knew (“To protect the peace of Earth”), the former… well, that was a bigger discussion.  Right now, the problem was that Decade had landed a punch on Hongo.

The thing was, after he’d done that, he just kept moving.  Amidst the swarm of forcibly-modified people (more frightful was the thought that some of them might have volunteered), Decade was sparring with Ichimonji and the scared kid—what was his name again?—who turned into Kiva.  That single blow from Decade had torn off Hongo’s arm and done a whole mess of damage to his chest besides.

“If you’re not sure, there’s no shame.”

Godai wished he could smile as Kuuga.  He wished there was a way he could find anything to say while less than twenty feet away, a man with nothing but a robotic arm tried to pull Decade to the ground only to find himself thrown—almost as an afterthought—into one of the interdimensional portals.

As Kuuga, Godai’s senses were in overdrive.  Even moreso than normal.  He saw the bent metal, the fine layers of fake skin, the complex filigree of circuitry that was built into every inch of Hongo’s body, probably what allowed it to move with that frightful smoothness. 

The Peacemaker wasn’t anything compared to that.  Nor were the repairs.  Now he had a spare part.  Now he had _time_. 

“I can do this,” Godai asserted as he allowed the unholy heat the Amadam gave him to push to the surface of Kuuga’s impossibly black chitin, heating the metal enough that the bits that were bent became just pliable enough to be set to rights, “I’m good at learning.  Trust me.”

Hongo nodded sharply and said no more.  His helmet had been shattered during the conflict—shattered as the man’s arm—revealing the man’s face; he was in his early sixties with a built-in grimace and two long red scars running from his eye to his jaw on each side of his face like some character in a Kabuki performance. 

And Godai set to work. 

Now, as he was pulling out the buckled part of the joint, he was glad that for all the Peacemaker was in the _shape_ of a man, it wasn’t alive.  It wasn’t moving.  It wasn’t wincing or grunting when he channeled Kuuga’s heat into melting manifolds together, it wasn’t cursing and kicking away one of the summoned Rider-shadows while Kuuga tried to finish merging together delicate power relays and tried to line up maimed circuitry so it’ll work again.  At least for the moment.

But he’d got Hongo up and running again just in time to get kicked in the back by Decade and sent sprawling into an Earth where the sun was blocked out by a swirling mass of evil black clouds and everything he could see was covered in a thick layer of ice.

And in the here and now, the ankle joint was installed and he was plugging the submotors back in.

Kido waved Sakaki over and gestured to the joint.

Godai stepped away, wiping some grease off his forearms.

The old man scowled and while his eyes weren’t visible behind Sakaki’s mirrored glasses, Godai could tell they were examining the installation. 

Sakaki turned his head to the side and barked out, “Shige!”

Another man wearing a tie under his coveralls marched over.  There was a thin wisp of a moustache on the man’s face and under his cap, Godai could see he was starting to go grey.  The man, Shige, adjusted his glasses and leaned in to check as well.

Finally, Shige leaned back, “It’ll work.  Needs some cleanup around the edges and from the look, there’s some steps that got done in the wrong order, but I’ve seen worse.” 

There was a tense moment as Shige looked at Sakaki.

Sakaki barely inclined his head before turning to Godai, “You need to read a few more manuals, kid, but you made the cut.”

“Oh, well, th—“

“What are you standing here talking for?” Sakaki snapped before looking at the other mechanics who snapped to attention, “I want a fresh inventory and to have someone explain to me why there are _chicken feathers_ in the ammo locker.”

Godai chuckled to himself and watched a few people storm around to try and organize an inventory and distribute blame about the chicken feathers (a problem Godai himself was curious about).  Shige gestured to Kido and another of the crew.  “While that gets sorted out, you two make sure the new guy gets the rundown, okay?”

Kido grinned, “I get to skip out on inventory?  Awesome.”

“Only because—“

Godai’s head snapped up when a siren sounded.  Almost as a single unit, the mechanics swarmed toward another section of the hangar, where Godai saw the two robots he’d seen the previous week.  The one that didn’t shoot looked like new, with every surface gleaming.  It wasn’t that the formerly one-armed robot looked _bad_ by comparison, but it looked like what it was: a decade-old machine which had been cared for by a crew of careful mechanics.  The other, by contrast, was clearly _loved_ by someone who’d read the manuals and a few more besides and paid out of their own pocket for some high-end waxes, probably some that were specially-formulated for exactly the kind of ceramic the machines used.

He didn’t know if the short-haired woman who was running along the upper-level catwalk toward the gleaming robot was its normal pilot but he made a note in his head to keep half an eye on her. 

Godai turned to Kido, “So… what do we do now?”

Kido offered a good-natured shrug, “Prepare to disrupt the inventory of the Ingram parts and prep all the stuff we’re gonna need for maintenance.  Once we get a rundown of what they’re up to, we’ll start picking out likely parts.  After that, it’s back to working on the other shifts’ labors until the second unit comes back or units one and three get sent out to join ‘em.”

Godai let out an appreciative whistle, “Sounds like a busy day.”

“Try busy week.  Hope you didn’t have any plans.”

He watched the two older robots step out of their maintenance bays and onto the trailers connected to the massive transports that were idling in preparation of taking them to whatever robot-related crime was going on.

A part of him wanted to find an excuse to follow, to sneak away, become Kuuga again and see if he could see what it was in the gleaming robot’s character—as a machine or in its pilot—that made it unwilling to fire on a primordial horror that crawled up from the Earth.

He needed that back.

He needed to understand it.

He needed to follow and

Behind him, he heard Sakaki bark at him, “Newbie, get to work.  You aren’t here to look at the labors, you’re here to fix them, understand?”

Godai nodded sharply, saluted the man, and went after Kido and the rest of the crew to bet everything ready for when the second unit returned ahead of finishing the repairs on the Peacemaker.


End file.
